"Bring the Troops Home" argues The Progressive, "Nah Let 'Em Stay" says the New York Times

"Bring the Troops Home" argues The Progressive magazine (http://www.progressive.org/feb05/com0205.html) the same week the New York Times editorializes that we might want to consider postponing the elections.

"Facing Facts About Iraq's Election" ran January 12, 2005. No link provided because they only make articles free for seven days. If you're interested in it, visit your library. (We are opposed to the idea being floated of the New York Times becoming a for-pay site.)

In a very long editorial, the editorial board of the paper weighs in on elections. The five of us are pulling a blank on when they last ran so long of an editorial. Certainly, nothing on Iraq during the lead up to the occupation.

And occupation is what it is. While not doubting that the New York Times means every word and means well, the fact remains that the insurgency wouldn't exist if we weren't there. We only inflame the situation by remaining.

George W. Bush, the Bully Boy, engaged in this act of Bully Without Borders claiming he would bring freedom to the people of Iraq. When?

This is not a backward culture. This is an educated people. And at what point do they get to weigh in and determine their own path?

Many people are worried that elections will result in an anti-woman government. As Naomi Klein so aptly put it: "All this manly defense of women's rights is certainly enough to make a girl swoon" (http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041018&s=klein).

It's an interesting worry considering that despite the media portrayals, Iraq was not Afghanistan. Women were allowed to pursue education and careers. There was no law enforcing that women wear burkas. To hear the Bully Boy tell it, freedom is on the march.
Well who's stamping it out?

This is their country and they'll have to make whatever decisions they choose to as a people. It's a basic principle of democracy. The notion that we should postpone elections is made by some on the left out of genuine concern. We realize that. We also realize that unless we're prepared to leash a nation the way did prisoners in Abu Ghraib, we must allow a free people to make their own way.

The handover has been repeatedly delayed and in the process, corporations have swooped in to bid on various assets. That was permitted by our rule, not by the people of Iraq. And guess what? They can't cancel those contracts without facing legal damages. We wrote that rule too.
How much more damage are we going to do? When have enough Iraqis and Americans died on Iraq's soil that we say, "Enough?"

Mission Accomplished read the banner in the spring of 2003. So why are we still over there?
Concern for the rights of women is something we support. But having signed on to this misguided war, it's a little late for the New York Times to start worrying about the damage we might cause.

The New York Times writes:

To understand what's happening in Iraq, imagine the mind-set of the Sunnis -- not the loathesome terrorists who shoot election workers and kill civilians with car bombs and mines, but the average people, including middle-class men and women whose lives have been ruined since the invasion.

Okay, we'll take you up on that creative exercise. We'll dismiss as "terrorists" people opposed to the occupation and we'll worry about the "average people" -- or at least the "middle-class."
Their lives have been ruined since the invasion. "Since the invasion?" That would be during the occupation while they have been ruled by others. Prolonging the occupation will help how?

The New York Times also notes that "in retrospect" the elections should have been set up along different lines. The paper has editorial space each and every day. It's nice that they're suddenly concerned with how the elections were set up, however, with elections due to take place this month, it's a little late in the day to weigh in on how they should be set up.

The New York Times offers:

Many Americans -- and many Iraqis -- worry that if the elections are postponed, the terrorists will feel empowered by having won. That might indeed be the case for the next few months. But that outcome would be far outweighed by the danger that would come from a civil war, with the Sunni territory becoming a no man's land where terrorists could operate at will. Others argue that civil war is probably inevitable one way or another, and that we may as well get the voting over with. That kind of pessimism may be warrented.

Might it be warrented? "Others" don't make it into the paper very often. What we get are the various "people" occupying Thomas Friedman's mind and those who say "We need to stay the course." Perhaps had "pessimisim" been given a voice in the lead up, we wouldn't be where we are now? We are there now. "Many Americans" may indeed worry that postponing the elections will empower the terrorists. "Others" might feel that a civil war will happen regardless. But guess what, there aren't just two groups of people in America.

The paper limits the discussion to their position and the straw men.

How it expects to soothe feelings by postponing elections is never addressed. There concern for the "middle-class" may be touching (and non-surprising) but it's really not about what the New York Times wants. It's about an occupation that has continued month after month. It's about our presence that inflames tensions. The paper doesn't want to acknowledge how bad the situation is. Or the fact that the occupation results in animosity not just from Iraq but from many neighboring countries.

Postponing the elections and prolonging the occupation continues to paint a target on the back of everyone over there (Iraqi or American). Enough lives have been lost. Prolonging the occupation only inflames tensions further.

Here's something the paper might want to "imagine." Picture that we're occupied as a colony. Picture that we want to determine our own way. Picture that we fight back.

It's a basic history lesson, it shouldn't be too hard for the New York Times. Today it's "terrorists" but who is it tomorrow if the occupation continues?

Such an exercise requires that we not reduce the issues to the simplest terms: good and bad. And that we not reduce the people in the same manner: terrorist and middle-class. It requires that we see them not as our ward or children but as the independent people that they are and allow them to make their own way. Things might turn worse (that's realism, not pessimism). If so, we can address that should it happen. The New York Times is more than free at that point to once again sign on to push a war. No doubt the notion would excite Judith Miller who appears to have little to do these days except alternate court and TV appearences with bashing the UN.

Those who pushed the unjust war have hardly inspired the trust necessary to result in an outcry in this country that we postpone elections. Those who have refused to cover the conflict of interest regarding James Baker are the last ones to inspire trust. (See http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20041115&s=klein because you didn't hear about it in the New York Times.)

The paper's offered two views since the occupation: the administration's and the reporting by people on the ground telling of battles, explosions, etc. The paper has yet to address anything larger than daily events. The paper has yet to allow dissenting voices to appear. Just because it has clamped down on the flow of information doesn't mean that the people don't get other information. It doesn't mean that we are saying, "Sure stay in ten more years! As long as it takes! We're behind that!"

Quite the contrary, polls show the people of this country have grown weary with the daily death counts. (Imagine how much more outraged we'd be if we bothered to track the number of Iraqi casualities.)

TV offers headlines and a simple image or two. A daily paper is supposed to provide some context, some perspective. The New York Times has yet to do that in any way regarding Iraq.
For all the pats on the back they get for noting some development, they've yet to string the developments together. They've yet to provide perspective on what is going on.

Now they want to weigh in with an editorial telling us, in their "we know best" voice, that the elections must be postponed? They can't even address the culture we've created (and one some soldiers are bringing back with them) or the damage this was has inflicted (on Iraqis and Americans). Instead the paper appears to suffer from Alzheimer Disease. One day, readers are exposed to an unearthed report, the next they're back to reporting administration spin as if the previous story never ran.

When the New York Times demonstrates that it can get its own house in order, we might be willing to consider their arguments. Until then, we're left with the fact that they've done a poor job of examining what's gone on over there and the domestic policies that have allowed things to be done in our name without our knowledge.

We won't question the editorial board's sincerity or that they mean well. But it's past time for them to cover what's going on in a constructive manner that pieces together past revelations and events. Their early coverage of the tsunami demonstrated what the paper can still do if it chooses to. But with Iraq, each story is a corner of a quilt which they report on as pieces without ever noting the bigger project.

Posted on below "Bring the Troops Home" on the web page of The Progressive (http://www.progressive.org/feb05/com0205.html) is an editorial by the Madison Observer.
The first paragraph sums up reality in a way that the 15 paragraph New York Times editorial never bothers with:

The United States is an occupying power, and no population likes to be occupied, as even Bush himself has acknowledged. What's more, the Bush Administration has bungled the occupation from the start. It did not prevent the wholesale looting of Baghdad ("Stuff happens," said Rumsfeld). It did not provide electricity and clean water in a timely fashion. It laid off hundreds of thousands of people in the army and other areas of the public sector. Under the direction of Paul Bremer, it privatized the economy to serve U.S. corporations. And U.S. soldiers have leveled thousands of homes and detained more than 10,000 Iraqi men without charges.

When the New York Times wants to address that in an editorial proposal on the state of Iraq, we'll be happy to listen. Until then, thanks for the good intentions but where is the information your supposed to be providing: "all the news that's fit to print?"